music industry :: Blog

For the second year in a row, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum moderated a panel at the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, TX.

On March 18, the Rock Hall's panel, A Woman's Work: Changing the Music Industry, traced the history, challenges and changing roles of women working in the music industry. The panel examined the business relationships of booking agents, managers, record label executives and publicists with female artists and the resulting influence of their successes, as well as the future of gender roles in the music industry.

Over the last few weeks, several pundits have made splashes with articles declaring the death of “rock ‘n roll.” After close examination, we here at the Museum see these arguments as more of a testament to the decline of the music industry and not the art form that we celebrate. The statistics below are the underpinning for these writers’ arguments. Additional hay has been made by the fact that other stats for the top songs of the year have been reviewed by certain critics and determined by them to include only two or three “rock” songs. You can probably guess where this latter revelation or “fact” takes me……. how do you define rock?

When you step back and take a look at history, so called experts have been predicting or claiming that rock and roll is or will be dead for almost as long as it has been around. The reality is that more folks, and especially young people, turn to this art form (as we righteously define it, e.g. rock, RnB, urban, hip hop, blues, etc.) to express themselves than they ever did. Ya just don’t see gaggles of folk, jazz, or classical, combos spontaneously bubbling up ...

The Rock Hall Blog

This is where we will post insights from Rock Hall staff and guest writers about exhibits, events, concerts and more with an emphasis on lesser known facets of the Rock Hall. Consider this your backstage pass.